Bob Pisani of CNBC, who reports from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, said of the plunging market 14 July 2008: “It all began well, but in the end was disappointing because they (equity traders and futures traders) sold into the rally.”A little translation: The news prior to market opening had been that the government (that is you and I and our tax dollars) would infuse capital into the vaults of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (The giant U.S. Government-chartered corporations that purchase mortgages from lenders and re offer them to investors as mortgage-backed securities. Together, they hold 50% of the mortgage debt in the country.) That should have inspired buying which would have bolstered the two Fannies. It did, but only briefly.

More Pisani: “What happened? Futures were up pre-open, we started strong…and then faded away. It is not a good sign that financials–the very group that was supposed to be helped by the Fannie/Freddie news–are flat to down.”Loyal to the economy, these market traders. “Selling into the rally tells us they expected the news of an up market in the beginning, then took their profits.” Is this any way to run an economy? Do these people really care about the hundreds of thousands of Americans who need the help of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? “Selling into a rally” is just greed. It has nothing to do with empathy or even a hint of patriotism shown toward less fortunate fellow Americans. It’s just selfishly taking advantage. A lot of unethical acts are legal. Not all “selling into rallies” is a bad thing. This one was. If you know someone who profited from selling into today’s rally, point the finger.

Assumptions about an economic meltdown are warranted, yet what’s kept the criminal class on Wall Street and on the Beltway going is the deep wealth of the nation’s resources, i.e. its people, (certainly including the current immigrant slave class), its ingenuity (we are different from other nations in this respect), and, of course. the natural resources not yet squandered. We’ll come back from this latest (Iraq debacle, housing melt-down, current oil bubble), but the rank-and-file (we) will pay the bill, as always. Look at the Bear Stearns bailout, look at the cash infusions for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It was Bush, et. al. who deregulated, let them and their social class pay the bill. Not likely. The “folks” are asleep. If we are to carry on in the fashion of the past half century since WW2, giving our lives over to speculative profit, imperial war mongering, sound bite politics, and greater numbers of “the distracted” playing video games, all trance-like and spell-bound, it would still take another century to bankrupt the nation IMHO. If they succeed in continuing to rob the Social Security Fund, it would push this meltdown date forward. Read “Citizens,” a history of the French Revolution by Simon Schama.

Citizens do take control, once-in-a-while, but you’d rather not have it like the French Revolution, which spilled blood on everyone. You’d rather have the “folks” participate in the still-existent, workable political structure. Do you see any evidence of this apart from the heady kids in Seattle and Genoa. I don’t. More of the same, even if a bit less shady.

Tags: bail out, debt, fannie, freddie, french revolution, lenders, mortgages, rally, tarp, wall street